


Any Way The Wind Blows

by cypher_snake



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California (Comics)
Genre: Gen, The Fabulous Killjoys (Danger Days) Are Not MCR, the girl's mom's name is Maya, write about the girl without the fab four challege
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29237319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cypher_snake/pseuds/cypher_snake
Summary: The Girl wanted to get away from Battery City now that everyone was awake. But now, three months into journeying in the desert alone she realizes she doesn't know what she came out here looking for. But will a cryptid stranger and her curious herd give The Girl all she needs? Or are they just more sunburns looking to rob her.





	Any Way The Wind Blows

The Girl was looking for water. She knew there was a crop of cactuses beyond the next dune, well if the dune hadn't moved since two nights ago. C.a.t. was the only thing keeping her company as she trudged along. Her belongings were neatly packed on her back, tied to a folding chair with seat belts and a collection of slackline for straps, reminiscent both of a backpack or of battleground spoils. But her mind was much less organized. Conflicting feelings wandered about, spite and vengeance wrestled concern all the while making her spin and adding to her already pounding headache. She wasn't going insane, that she knew as much. Most of her face was covered with aviator goggles and a handkerchief folded into a mask and she had fashioned as well, fittings for C.a.t. with bottle caps and a cut up shirt so that it's ears wouldn't get sand. There were some out here who didn't wrap themselves up at all if they couldn't or chose not to was beside the point after a few days you were addicted to the radiation regardless.  
The Girl could see the cacti now and she put down her pack to untie the largest item, serving as a protective shield for the rest of her equipment. She had felt bad taking a piece of DESTROYA, especially after it had housed her as a teen, helped free the city, and that she kinda maybe sorta had stolen from a Goddess. But a girl had to survive if she wanted to live out in the desert. Her mom hadn't been the happiest with her choice which was understandable, but they both understood that The Girl didn't really know Maya. As the city was being rebuilt, as lost teenagers and newly awake citizens of the city alike were grasping thin air to search for their next leader to idolize, The Girl confessed to Maya in a letter that she couldn't stand being a leader, not after she had seen what had happened to everyone she knew who called themself a leader, said she wanted to be back in the desert, but didn't say what she was looking for.  
The cacti were ample sized and she hacked off a paddle as a lizard and rare woodpecker rushed off, frightened of her presence. The woodpecker squacked and flew in circles in the air before landing back down on a cacti a few feet over. It made sense, where was a bird going to go out here? The Girl used her knives to de-spine her paddle and then cut it into pieces. Most went into jars but finally she took a prickly pear for herself.  
She scraped off the spiny hairs of her reward and bit into the neon pink fruit. Water filled her mouth and coated her parched throat. She coughed and the woodpecker, who had nailed a blue striped cockroach took off to the west at the sound. The Girl, who was not a girl at all anymore, quickly gathered her things and followed after the bird.  
The blue and grey feathers, a long black beak and shrill squacks flew on past The Girl as she trekked. The sun was almost done setting and then she would have to set up camp. She and c.a.t. veered to the left and found themselves on the leeward side of a substantial rock. The Girl set up her tent and took out a thermos of water she had found in a ghost town a few miles back.  
She held the cup in both hands and squeezed her eyes shut. Breathing deeply her back began to glow, the light spread through the fern-like branching capillaries of her scar. She did not glow nearly as bright as the time she had become her destiny: a bomb set to detonate, uproot, and awaken a city, a desert, and a people who were blind in more ways than one. Now, all that remained were these pale lines on her dark brown skin running from her back down her legs, up her arms, and circling around her neck and torso. The soft blue light had reached her finger tips and a humming, not unlike c.a.t.'s charging could be heard by any lizards or foxes about. The thermos warmed and after a few minutes The Girl shook out her body and opened her eyes to see the light scamper back along her arms until it clustered on her back and went out. She lit her lantern and sipped the water, pulling out some jerky and nopales from her recent jackpot as a makeshift dinner, if dinner had ever been formal.  
Perhaps it had, long ago. And perhaps it could be again, if she ever went back. When she left only Maya had understood why. The rest of the people, the rebels, she had grown up around didn't see what the desert could have that the city didn't. Central plumbing, public transit, buildings to fashion into homes were all new spectacles to them. But all The Girl could see was the weight of what was to come, and her mother could see that in her eyes.   
"You can go. But you've got to promise you'll come back. You done changed things round here alright. And you can't run from your change. You can go off and find whatever it is you're looking for. But you come back no more than a year for now, you hear?"  
The Girl had nodded then, Maya's hand on her shoulder and a look in her face very few mothers have ever worn.  
"I'll come back Maya, I promise."  
"Good, now let me braid your hair properly before you go back out into the sands." The two women both knew the braids wouldn't last of course, but it was the last time she could have someone else do her hair, so they were bound meticulously tight and exact, such that the sand wouldn't be stuck in her hair for a while. And with that parting gift, she left.  
It had been three months now, all alone, she stopped counting the days somewhere around 72, knowing it wouldn't matter. The rush of wildflowers would be her true sign to venture homeward. Home. It was a funny thing to think about, there in the frigid night, resting against a porous rock. Would she ever know a constant, solid home?


End file.
